1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus for applying an exposure process and a development process to a photosensitive member.
2. Description of the Related Art
A photograph processing apparatus is known, that can automatically apply processes such as exposure, development, bleaching and fixing and stabilization to photographic paper being a photosensitive member. In a photographic processing apparatus described in the Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-019825, a sheet of photographic paper is exposed in an exposure department at an intensity according to the pixel level of each pixel in image data. Then, a latent image formed on the sheet appears when the sheet on which the latent image has been formed is developed in a development department.
In such a photograph processing apparatus, the processing capacity of the development department is generally smaller than the processing capacity of the exposure department. Therefore, the speed for conveying sheets of photographic paper in the development department is required to be lower than the speed for conveying the sheets of photographic paper in the exposure department. As above, when conveying speed is different in the exposure department and the development department, the time period from the moment at which the exposure process is applied to the moment at which the development process is applied (hereinafter, referred to as “latent image time”) is not same between areas for each of which the distance from the front end in the conveying direction on a sheet of photographic paper is different from each other. More specifically, the latent image time of an image formed in an area in the vicinity of the back end of a sheet of photographic paper is longer than the latent image time of an image formed in an area in the vicinity of the front end of the sheet. The difference in the latent image time appears as the difference of the tone of the images obtained by developing. In other words, the tones in areas having the latent image time different from each other are not same even when the whole area of the sheet of photographic paper has been exposed according to the same pixel level. As a result, the images obtained have a low tone-reproducing property and low image quality. Especially, because the difference in the latent image time between the vicinity of the front end and the back end of the sheet of photographic paper is drastically large when the sheet of photographic paper is exposed over a very long range along the conveying direction, the image quality is considerably degraded.